Dire wolves are one of those creatures from the past that has captured the public imagination. They are conventionally dreamed of as being massive wolves, and Hollywood has created fictional ones the size of horses.

The truth of the matter is they were only slightly larger than the largest of modern North American wolves.

We know that they were closely related to modern wolves, but their exact position in the wolf family tree is still a bit contested. The two species are close enough in appearance that it often takes a specialist to figure out whether one is looking at the skeletal remains dire or modern wolf the measurement of the skull features and limb proportions.

One feature, though, that is diagnostic of the dire wolf is its robust and “perky” baculum.

If you don’t know what a baculum is, that’s because you’re human. In virtually ever other species, the males have a “penis bone” or os penis. Where I grew up in West Virginia, it was not unusual for men to wear a raccoon’s baculum as talisman of both one’s virility and redneck bona fides.

The dire wolf is one of those ancient animals for which we have a lot of skeletal remains to examine. In the famous La Brea Tar Pits, where the remains of over a million Pleistocene creatures have been found, dire wolves are the most common species to have been recovered.

The tar pits were a death trap for all sort of large herbivorous mammals, and when they became stuck in the natural asphalt tar, they were easy pickings for scavengers. Dire wolves came to the tar pits to eat, but many, many of them died. Over 200,000 of them have been taken out of the site.

With such a big sample of dire wolf skeletal remains, paleontologists have been able to figure out quite a bit about their growth patterns, but of particular interest are the bacula of the male dire wolves. They are shaped not the bacula of any extant canid. They are curved and robust, and when compared to modern wolves of the roughly the same size, they are 44 percent longer.

That is a unusual find, and it suggests something about dire wolf behavior that isn’t true of modern wolves.

Modern wolves generally reproduce through a mated pair. In most wolf packs living in most situations in the wild, only a single pair in a pack gets to mate and produce pups. Other wolves in the pack might mate, but their pups will either be killed or abandoned.

This doesn’t happen every time. If there is abundant prey, these young females are sometimes allowed to raise their pups alongside their mother’s litter.

But in most cases, they don’t get to raise pups.

Modern wolves spend a lot of energy making sure that the mated pair, who are usually parents of the other wolves in the pack, get to mate and get to mate with each other. The other females in the pack might become pregnant, but they will be attacked if they try to mate with the main breeding male. The only way they ever get pregnant is by wandering interlopers who haven’t yet formed a pair bond with a female.

During the mating season is when young wolves typically leave their parents’ pack. They typically don’t have any mating opportunities, and the constant bickering wears on them.

The big and strangely shaped bacula of dire wolves suggests they might not have been quite like modern wolves. These bacula are suggestive that dire wolves were “better endowed” than modern wolves, and larger genitalia is usually associated with a less physically competitive reproductive strategy.

This phenomenon is well-known in primates. Generally, if a monkey or ape has bigger testes or penis, there is going to be less physical confrontation when it comes to mating.

The competition for well-endowed monkeys is how much semen a male can produce and how far up in the female he can penetrate it. If you can produce more semen and get it deeper into the female’s reproductive tract, then you’re more likely to pass on your genes.

In less-endowed species, there is much more physical confrontation to get one’s genes passed on.

My guess is that this applied to dire wolves. They may not have even had a proper pair-bonding system, and a dire wolf bitch may have mated with many partners in much the same way female domestic dogs do. The male dire wolves may have had very little competition for mating. They just mated and got along with each other.

It would have been an asset in a dire wolf pack for males to have gotten along with each other. More peace in a dire wolf pack means that more wolves remain in the pack for a longer period of time, and that means they would have had larger packs that would have been much more capable at hunting large prey. They also would have been better able to run off short-faced bears from their kills and to compete with Smilodons and American lions.

It’s likely that the intense competition between huge carnivorans during the dire wolf’s reign forced them into a more cooperative breeding and pack structure.

Again, no scientist has ever seen a dire wolf or observed their pack behavior, but they had this weird adaptation that sort of points to a more peaceful pack existence than exists in the modern species.

My guess is that dire wolves traveled in massive swarms, much like those seen in dholes of today. They were ruthless scavengers and dogged hunters.

When mating tame came, they bred like village dogs. Males would bunch up around a bitch in heat and each would mate with her. There would be no pair bond between the male and female.

Furever After Rescue is a foster-based rescue in Macon, Georgia devoted to finding homes for animals needing a loving family. Their animals are immediately placed in foster homes where they learn love and are taught how to live in a home environment.

Here’s what Furever After Rescue had to say about a recent Halo Pets donation:

“We were able to feed so many of our rescue dogs/puppies which allowed more money to go towards vetting and allow us to save more animals overall. By having the donated food, we had the opportunity to help more urgent needs with medical problems including some severely malnourished dogs that were given a second chance thanks to this program. Having quality food like what 14 Days of Rescue Love gave to us really helped the rescue put weight on emaciated dogs and meet the nutritional needs of so many more!

The biggest help this grant made was for our rat terrier mix Glacier. Glacier, or as we like to call her Glacy, came to the rescue as a puppy. She had demodex mange and rickets as well as being very emaciated. Sadly her immune system could not keep up from the lack of nutrition. At one point, the demodex got so bad the vet gave her a 50/50 chance at making it. We were determined not to give up on Glacier and the 14 Days of Rescue Love just helped us that much more in our resolve.

The help given to Glacier through this grant was two-fold. The biggest help was that the food donated was the quality and nutrition that she needed to build her immune system up. With the better food, she was able to overcome the emaciation, rickets, and start fighting off the demodex. In addition to giving Glacier the needed nutrition and quality food, by having that food donated, it allowed the rescue to put more money and resources towards Glacier’s vetting that we would have otherwise had to put a portion towards food. After months of good quality food and appropriate vetting, Glacier has made a full recovery and has even found her furever home!

The grant also helped us save and feed an entire litter of abandoned puppies. A good samaritan found a litter of 4-week-old puppies with no mother in sight and asked if we could bring them into the rescue. Feeding and growing tiny abandoned puppies is no easy feat but was made possible through the 14 Days of Rescue Love food grant. Thanks to the quality food donated to us through this grant, this litter of 6 Georgia pups grew big and healthy and were adopted by friends and family up in New York. Now they can continue to grow and play together thanks to the donation from this grant!”

Thank you Furever After Rescue for making a WHOLE lot difference for pets in your community.

When you choose Halo pet food, made from natural, whole food ingredients, your pet won’t be the only one with a radiant coat, clear eyes and renewed energy. Halo feeds it forward, donating over 1.5 million bowls annually. As always, Halo will donate a bowl to a shelter every time YOU buy.

you'll hear about a raid or bust then want to find out more but all you get is a paragraph or so…recently there was a bust and the aspca handled it but all they posted was a paragraph and no details whatsoever.BAD RAP Blog

It’s time for me move on – or rather sideways! This blog, along with Menton Daily Photo has been running for 10 years and it’s time to consolidate so that everything is in one place.

Thank you, thank you for your loyalty to Riviera Dogs and to me. Your loyalty, your comments and encouragement helped me so much in my photography journey.

The new blog will be published probably once or twice a week – but with more photos and more words. And of course there will be lots and lots of dogs – but also stories of life in France and Italy and sometimes a little about photography.

Of course, if you want to look back at postings on this blog, well, they are not going anywhere. You’ll be able to find all the posts and photographs from the last ten years at any time – I just won’t be posting here anymore.

So onwards…. if you are interested in dogs (and you’d not be here if you weren’t) but also life as it’s really lived in the south of France and Italy and my journey in photography, come with me …

Click on the link Jilly Bennett Photography and do subscribe for updates. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation button you receive after subscribing and then you’ll find me in your mailbox on a regular basis.

I posted yesterday about a Pug who felt it was more than unfair that a tree had been brought into his home. How does your dog feel about your Christmas preparations? Until next time, Good day, and good dog!

In preparation for next week’s big National Dog Championships, I’m spending a little time learning about the new breeds recognized by the AKC this year. First up: the Sloughi! According to the American Sloughi Association, the Sloughi is a rare breed of Arabian sighthound from the north African countries of Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Algeria. […]